Fight Aggro With Bigger Aggro

I agonized over whether I could actually post this as-is, but in the end, Kim Yi-seon's interview went up untouched, edited into a video and published for the world to see.

And, as always, the reaction exploded. No—correction. Not as always.

The bait had gone beyond simple community forums now—even the news outlets had swallowed it, hook, line, and sinker.

"Yes, hello. Interviews are currently being handled exclusively by the Twins' PR team, but any press inquiries should be directed to the players' agent rather than—"

Even now, the phones at the Seoul Twins PR office rang off the hook, multiple calls a day, all of them from established sports outlets asking for sources on Wirye Jeil High or requesting interviews.

Meanwhile, not a soul asked about the Twins themselves. On the rare occasion a reporter did bring up the team, they'd slyly wedge a Jeil High question in there somewhere.

Media relations weren't even supposed to be her job as team leader. But when the outlets were calling with desk-level editors on the line instead of rank-and-file reporters, and the staff member actually assigned to media relations was dying under the workload, what choice was there?

"I really have lost my mind, falling for that kind of nonsense..."

When she'd first heard Kim Yi-seon's inflammatory remarks in that interview, she'd actually pushed back, asking him ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠whether such an aggressive statement would only drive up attention. It had already driven attention up to the point where that horrifying incident had happened—and how long ago had that been?

But Kim Yi-seon's thinking operated on a completely different axis from the start.

"The weirdos were never going to disappear no matter how careful we are from now on. Better to crank up the spotlight so that everyone else starts watching the weirdos for us."

She hadn't been sure that logic held up—but then he'd added that since they were going to win the weekend league anyway and march into the national tournament, attention would find them whether they liked it or not, and she'd found herself halfway persuaded.

So she'd thought, fine, it'll just make some noise on the internet for a while. How bad can it get? A complacent mistake. The result: an ever-climbing mountain of phone calls.

"Yes, this is Han Seo-hee, PR team leader for the Seoul Twins. I'm calling about the article Reporter Park San-ha published today. Are we to understand its contents as the official position of the Goryeo Daily as a whole?"

"I found this piece rather distasteful. If we don't receive a proper apology and a correction, we'll be revisiting Real Sports' press credentials for team access going forward."

"Director Jang. Your sports desk can be as independent as it likes, but this crossed the line long ago. These are still students, aren't they? If this continues, we'll have no choice but to consult the players' agent and pursue legal action."

No matter how much media response she handled, it never ended. Ordinarily this work belonged to the players' agent, but how many high schoolers had agents to begin with?

Aside from Kim Yi-seon and Kang Min-hyuk, none of the players had representation, so a huge share of the work had come flooding toward the Seoul Twins. It was exactly why the contract included that clause—exclusive interviews and exclusive access, in exchange for the club handling all media response.

For Han Seo-hee, an introvert of the most extreme variety, it wasn't simply that her workload had grown. It was that the work piling up on her desk was the kind that required constant contact with other human beings. Day after day of calls and meetings with journalists, she was slowly dying of interpersonal stress.

If the news outlets were in an uproar, the community side of things had been vaporized.

The looks-obsessed crowd, admittedly, hadn't reacted much. Which, in a strange way, made me think they might be the real fans—the ones dutifully buying jerseys, showing up to games, cheering the players on with everything they had.

On the complete opposite end, Amateur Baseball Gallery—the self-anointed home of the truly hardcore—was in a state of near civil war.

The war was being waged chiefly by baseball moms and toxic fans of rival schools.

Kim Yi-seon had shown promise since middle school, sure, but nobody had ever whispered the word draft pick about him. And Kang Min-hyuk had been written off as a soft-tosser clear into middle school. Now both of their stock was rising past the ceiling, and out of the woodwork came the gallery that fancied itself the largest high school baseball community in the country, swinging away at the pair like it owed them money.

And so the malicious hit pieces rolled in—half the users weirdly persuaded by them, the other half firing back in disbelief—until the whole place tore itself apart from within.

For the record, Paejok—Fallen Royalty—was a derogatory nickname for the Gaeseong Royals. Since "Royals" literally meant royal family, fans would sometimes call them the Royal Family, but the franchise's relocation history, combined with its dismal results, had fused degenerate and royalty into the shortened slur everyone used now.

The central battleground of the argument was the small sample size versus what the two players' talent plainly showed on film. It had only been a month—too soon for a final verdict. But for the haters, the problem went deeper: not just Yi-seon, but the performance the entire Wirye Jeil High roster was putting up simply made no sense.

In the end, settling the debate required only one thing: watching Wirye Jeil High's games and following their march through the season. Meanwhile, ordinary people lured in by the sensational headlines were beginning to turn their eyes toward the school as well.

And so, as more and more attention gathered, the effect Kim Yi-seon had intended began to manifest.

"See? To hide a tree, you bury it in a forest. And if you want to keep a thief safe, you stand him in the middle of the town square."

Paparazzi were now a daily fixture even at the team's light practice sessions. No—not even paparazzi anymore. These days, anyone whose identity checked out was handed a designated photo zone and told to shoot away at their leisure.

The fans? They got a casual autograph every morning on my way to school. Photos together were a given, and occasionally someone would request something a little embarrassing—which I quietly granted behind Ye-eun's and Min-ah's backs. They'd probably be annoyed if they found out, but hey, you commit to the bit or you don't start at all.

Anyway. With aggro pulled this hard and this many eyes on us at all times, any creeper or two trying to slink in unnoticed got flagged instantly. It was basic arithmetic: if you can't separate the criminals from the press vultures, you dilute them—flood the room with witnesses until their concentration drops to nothing. Thanks to that, while the fan count had exploded, the number of fans actually caught causing trouble had gone down compared to before. Everyone was watching everyone else.

The PR team leader had glared at me, face full of disbelief, and lit into me.

"Do you have any idea how hard my team worked to get things back to anything resembling normal after that mess? If it hadn't been for that incident, I would never have agreed to help you with this. Remember that this was a special favor."

Of course, this idea alone, left to run wild, wouldn't hold up. Like the law that bad money drives out good—when a small, toxic minority ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠gets loud enough, they end up dragging the majority along with them. So every time the fringe got loud, a thinning-out operation had to run alongside it.

And that pruning, naturally, was the job of the agent, the school, and the club supporting them. In the days it took for everything to find its orbit, the strange outlets and the suspicious stalkers got quietly sorted out in advance, and the smear rumors spreading in the wake of the earlier incident were stamped down hard as well.

When I bowed my head deeply in gratitude for all that labor, the team leader just huffed and kept sulking. At first she'd carried herself with this composed, grown-woman gravitas, but as we'd gotten to know each other, I'd discovered she was oddly childish in places. Almost cute, honestly.

Which, fair enough—she turned out to be far younger than I'd assumed. Younger than my previous life's self by a good margin, and compared to this body, only four years older. So how did someone that age already hold the title of team leader while a middle-aged ahjusshi like Section Chief Park Young-chul worked under her? Genuinely baffling.

Anyway, having worked someone that young that hard left me feeling a little sheepish, and the whole situation was kind of funny too. I kept trying to catch the sulking team leader's eye, silently begging her to let it go, and before I knew it, laughter was bubbling up out of me.

"...Do you flirt with absolutely everyone like that? Does Ye-eun know? Min-ah?"

"Sorry, what? Flirt with what?"

"Haah... it's nothing."

The team leader rubbed her temple like the headache was setting in for real.

"And what's even more baffling is that you stirred up this much aggro and then didn't pitch at all this week. What was that about?"

"Huh. I hadn't pegged you for a 'pitcher's shoulders get stronger the more you use them' believer, Team Leader."

That one joke sent her into a genuine sulk. How had someone with instincts this sharp been passing herself off as a charismatic career woman all this time?

I hurried on before she could fully commit to the pout.

"There's no grand reason for it. You wouldn't believe me if I told you it was simply time for a rest, would you?"

"No."

But it was time. Play the full weekend league and then a full national tournament, and my appearances would sail past twenty games. As a starter, I'd be looking at well over 150 innings.

Plenty of professionals can't even throw that much. A high schooler doing it was asking for a breakdown—and it wasn't just me. Kang Min-hyuk needed managing too. In the manga he throws close to 200 innings, which is an outright absurdity.

So this week I rested—giving Kang Cheol and the younger guys a chance to take the mound while I was at it. Next week, Min-hyuk rests and I pitch.

"Spare me the excuses. What's the real reason? If you were just planning to rest, you wouldn't have come out as designated hitter and given that interview on top of it."

True—I hadn't pitched yesterday, but I'd started as the DH and gone off. A home run plus two more hits, and an interview afterward besides.

It was with an outlet other than the Twins' PR people, and I'd declared, boldly and on the record, that our goal was the Grand Slam. Thanks to that, aggro levels—already scraping the stratosphere—had hit record highs for days running.

So: crank the aggro and the expectations sky-high, then conspicuously fail to take the mound, letting anticipation pile up even further. Why?

"Because I'm human too. I've been skimming those hate threads."

"And?"

"And some of them are saying I don't have the stamina to start."

What exactly did they think was the point of me breaking my back training to throw with both arms? To pitch enough innings to start, obviously. And they have the nerve to doubt that?

"Honestly, the only reason my numbers look light is that Min-hyuk's been wolfing down innings like a monster and I'm under my own self-imposed limit. I'm eating as many innings as any respectable high school starter out there. And the hatpersists keep running their mouths about it anyway. It pisses me off."

And now a month had gone by. The deadline I'd promised the clinic director had passed, and when I had my body checked and consulted with him yesterday, he said it looked fine to start easing my self-imposed limits and pitching as a starter.

"So—my first start, I'm going for a complete-game shutout. That kills the hate in one stroke, right?"

And the opponent couldn't be some middling team. It had to be a strong one.

The team I'd named as my first-start opponent: Suwon High.

We'd already played Donghyun High and Po-eun High, which made Suwon the last remaining powerhouse in the southern region. In fact, this week's rest existed entirely for this—to put myself in the best possible condition for the Suwon game.

"Let's see who's got something to say about stamina and starter-readiness after I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠blank Suwon High."

I had absolutely zero intention of leaving the hate machine alone. Yes, professional athletes sign up for a certain amount of slander and bad press—that's the job.

But why should I have to eat it? Do you have any idea how much I suffered fixing this wretched glass body of mine just to unlock the talent underneath? All that suffering deserves to be repaid in results.